


Second Shelves in Familiar Eccentricities

by same_menz_new_cult



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Student/Teacher, Discord: Bellamione Cult, F/F, Teacher-Student Relationship, stcp au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-10 05:50:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18654196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/same_menz_new_cult/pseuds/same_menz_new_cult
Summary: Hermione Granger: a clever, over-achieving, and perpetually underwhelmed new student at more schools than she can count on all the prehensile digits of herself and her academically-obsessive parents combined, who expects very little from Whenchester College, the latest addition to her transcripts and source of such esteemed traditions as decorating Saint Francis in beads and brassieres.Early-twenties: dangerous years when, if not kept ten-year-plan busy, one begins to age like a browning line on the skin of an orange. All's fine underneath, but it earns a disdainful look from the roommates as it catches their eyes on the counter.Eccentricities: a metaphysical gift shop in the Town of Whenchester, home of overpriced crystals, uninspired palmistry, and first sightings.Nobs: an assortment of Whenchester girls akin to royalty who, for reasons indeterminate, are clinging to Hermione like the shroud of a corpse bride.Bellatrix Black: a complication.





	1. Chapter 1

They were in the Gems section of Eccentricities when she first saw Bellatrix Black, the day of Hermione's arrival in Whenchester. 

She was leaning against the display of salt lamps, waiting for Mum and Dad to finish muttering and chuckling under their breaths about how bustling the college-town spiritualism shop was for an utter scam. "The greatest creators of beautiful nonsense are not, in fact, the poets and the preachers, but those who wish to swindle children out of their parents' hard-earned pound," Mr. Granger was fond of commenting while blockading the aisles of any store that had caught his fancy and which he, himself had readily chosen to enter. 

As he studied the facets of an over-glitzing geode like a keen spectator of the sport of bedazzling, Hermione noticed a woman idling in the next row. 

She was wild-haired, slim as a rapier. Dressed in poker-den chic, a crisp black suit with a black-buttoned jacket and black leather boots more meat-skewer than heel. She ill-matched the place; utterly two-toned aside from the salt-lamp hues staining her monochrome skin in shades of terrible pastel, pink and puce and purple and coral, the lone gambler skulking into a candy shop, the licorice amongst gum-balls. There was an obviousness, however, in her carriage: she liked to snatch up nervous eyes. Her hooded stare dripped the utter satisfaction of a beautiful woman well used to being seen, yet lacked the false nervousness, the self-conscious sidling gaze and double-darting glances so common in those feigning modesty. 

That made it harder to hate her. 

Hermione had never cared for the sort of woman who walked through life as though everyone else should be her camera, forever shutter-blinking twice and panning along behind her in limp-longing envy, likely because Hermione couldn't imagine anyone's lens ever turned on her, not even her own. And yet she (and the purple-haired boy beside her whose mouth looked poised to receive the polished obsidian sphere in his hand like a whole hard-boiled egg down the gullet) couldn't help but turn and shutter-shut and snap-snap-snap away their blinking silence because even with several drawers of tumbled crystals and the whole leaning tower of tarot between them, the woman was unbelievably stunning and strange. 

To quote the Wenchester College Welcoming Brochure she'd been reading on the drive over, "Through this searing experience of God, one sees a world which hints of beauty and radiance not known to the rest of us." 

It was, in fact, a quote about the one-eyed statue of Saint Francis in the center of the main lawn, the mascot of Whenchester College, often bedecked in costume jewelry and the undergarments of the underclass, and yet it was those words which danced in perfect recollection at the sight of this stranger in black. 

She lowered two sticks of incense back into the diffuser on display and began to walk towards them. 

"Granite with azurite inclusions from Everest or blue topaz for manifestation?" asked Dad. 

Her stilettos skivered the floor. Hermione made a determined effort to strangle shut the iris, squinting unconvincingly at the flimsy business-card description on the bin full of topaz: 

  1. Excellent for manifestation 
  2. Helps one align their thoughts and actions with intention
  3. Attracts teachers and mentors into one's life when needed most



Though she'd zoomed in on words, Hermione couldn't help but notice the sway of darkness drawing closer, blurry but far more distracting than anything else in the store. As she passed, her stare crossed first Mrs., then Mr. Granger with all the interest of a businessman fording a shallow puddle. When she caught Hermione's eye, she smiled. 

There was an unkind elegance about her, spider-spun, like something that could go unseen in both daylight and darkness, save for an uncomfortably romantic sparkling out of the corner of the eye. She was older than Hermione'd guessed; she'd say "fifty?" with disbelief, but would still be unsurprised if it were true. Yet the least believable thing about her was that she was  _here_ , in this hipsterized pawn shop for the magically inclined but magic-less; she carried such a strong sense of the certified _other;_ bones all aligned incredibly close the skin like the matting of a photograph behind glass, all splayed out to make it impossible to miss their perfection. Hermione feared, when she opened her mouth, she'd speak rapid-fire Cockney like the shop-girl or the g-heavy Scouse of the Whenchester College prefect who’d given the tour ("Fere's two dorms left ta nab for a new girl; tage yeh pig.") and break this eerie proof of impossible things with mundanity. 

Then again, it was equally worrying that she'd speak and out would pour the Queen's-Own, Marry-Poppins-Proper nonsense sort of lullaby-chatter that had gone extinct outside the one socially-acceptable brand of reality telly: recreational romanticization of the royal family. 

Hermione couldn't quite convince herself, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that she was real. It was this place, this sham of a magic shop for first-years rebelling against decades of store-brand Christianity by dipping into the fresher materialism of “Wicca” which was nothing of the sort. This woman could have been a witch. In which case, why on earth would she be in Eccentricities. For all her hair was an utter hedge of dense, black curls, not one seemed to stray in a direction it was not perfectly intended to go; the faint smudge of incense on her first two fingers like an artful embellishment, a kiss of fairy dust. She carried the complete conviction that, wherever she was off to have dinner, she'd be the subject of a rousing, "Cheers!" And when that smile raised her eyes to the last quarter-mast, it turned form spider-spun to spider: dangerously welcoming. 

"I'm thinking this hunk of pink salt's more worth the seven pounds than that glob of amethyst stuck to a magnet. You can crumble it up over spaghetti! What do you think? Hermione?" 


	2. Chapter 2

If she'd never set eyes on her again, Hermione thinks she'd have stuck. Not like the various bookworm nick-names she'd accumulated in every schoolyard from Kirkcaldy Primary to Weymouth Proper, but like the bit of gum Seamus Finnegan had once left beneath his desk for her hair to get stuck in while reaching over for her dropped pencil—she'd refused to let Mum cut it out for a week, not wanting to give up the little bits of her DNA and unruly static cling that would go with it. 

As the tarot cards would fall, Hermione saw her again after dinner. 

Her freedom was scheduled to meet its maker in the morning, but tonight, Hermione and her parents took to the streets of the minuscule downtown Whenchester with their stomachs full of watery noodles from the “Asian” place on the corner which should more aptly be called “the noodle bowl place” for the singular and unembellished content of their menu. They wanted to see where, exactly, they were leaving their daughter, wanted to see it to its fullest, even if said _where_ was the least objectionable, most remote, clean-cut nowhere sort of college they’d found yet, and Hermione had seen a string of just such places.

After passing through the early-closing Swan’s Neck which boasted novelties of the overly expensive scarves and pranks-in-a-box variety, Mrs. Granger demanded an evening cup of tea at the red-curtained Velouska across the way. It had a dark, musty interior, cushions on the floor sectioned off by gauzy fabrics and strings of beads, and of course both Grangers with a say in the matter chose the darkest, closest corner of all—all the better to complain about between sips of Yin Zhen (the Mrs., in English: silver needles), Bulang (the Mr., translation: crimson lotus), and Ya Bao (Hermione, pleasantly surprised by the airy unpresumption of the wild buds).

It was after Mr. Granger’s second unsubtle pronouncement that “illuminating a space defines the value placed on its occupants, and this smudge is nothing short of a market crash” that a voice in the marginal brightness to their left offered, “Adolphia Appia would beg to differ.”

Hermione, blinking, followed the tidbit to its source, noticing along the way the rapid pinking of her father’s cheeks. She expected it to be a College Mum, a townie who’d never left the little nest around academia, just the sort of person who spotted her parents and thought Ah, a pair of kindred spirits, but it wasn’t.

It was _her_ , the woman from Eccentricities.

She was unreasonably tall, her borderline anachronistic suit-jacket somehow suiting the beads and tea steam and dim light just fine as she leaned in through their curtain, an elbow on the rail around the little dais where they sat, a pair of black sunglasses perched precariously atop her dark curls.

“He painted Tristan’s Isolde in hazy darkness to mark the melancholic end of a dazzling dream,” she continued in a voice like poisoned cinnamon, sharp and spiced and eerily palatable, like a black and white movie star whose tenor had been irrevocably altered by the peak of popular nicotine.

It was a wonderful voice.

 “He invented it, you know. Lighting design.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Granger with the lackluster indignation of a man who only regretted a lost chance to prove his own unsurpassed talent for spouting off trivia. “Appia.” He sniffed, and Hermione was suddenly embarrassed by the uncouthness, the too-loud sound approximating illness more than disdain. “Only in the most modern sense.”

“Well,” that voice said in an indelicate laugh, further sharpening the distinction between her cigar lounge drawl and Mr. Granger’s unsanded edges. “Velouska is hardly a study in torches. You aren’t from these parts, are you?” she asked him.

He blinked up at her dully.

It was Mrs. Granger who answered. “No. We’re not.”

“Just come round, then?” Dark eyes passed from parent to parent to daughter and back again without any particular pause, but Hermione’s heart all but fell out of gear for the second she met them. “Or have you moved in?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Granger, which did nothing to conceal his desire for this conversation to close.

“Enjoying Whenchester?”

“Thoroughly.”

It was odd, Hermione thought, seeing him this unfriendly. Both of them, actually. Typically, her parents latched on to a bit of trivia and a middle-aged smile like a nerdy uni boy on a date with a star-struck sixth form artsy-girl, eager to collect themselves another bit of company to impress, distress, and bore with their boundless cleverness. Then again, Dad had no greater pet peeve than being told something he already knew, so perhaps her unsolicited aside had rubbed him the wrong way. Hermione had, in fact, read her dad’s copy of _A Choréographie of Light and Space_ on the drive between the school before this one and the school before that, as well as _The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Unabridged: Oxford Edition_ for the fourth time, under firm instruction to revisit it from the lighting perspective which dad had insisted, unironically, would be freshly _illuminating._  

“Your daughter will be at the College, then.”

Hermione opened her mouth, but Mr. Granger’s monosyllabism beat her. “Yes.”

He was looking at Hermione with the clear demand for an escape hatch written all over his face. Why that should be her responsibility, she couldn’t fathom.

“I’m a professor there,” she said, and extended her hand to Hermione, who took it, allowed the brief squeeze of fingers, then pulled back with a quickness bordering on impolite. “Bellatrix Black.”

“Hermione Granger.”

The small, concentrated smile she’d born through their conversation widened just at the edges. “What a darling name.” She looked back at the Grangers.

“Helen,” Mrs. Granger offered with some reticence. Dad said nothing.

“Well. Charmed to meet you.”

The phenomenon of Mr. and Mrs. Granger interacting with teachers had always reminded Hermione of an uninspired toddler’s playdate. Most of the time, there was nothing remotely interesting to the outside eye; they babbled on in a language unintelligible to anyone else in the room (but which Hermione was unfortunately over-acquainted with). Other times, there might be an ineffective exchange of chubby fists that never quite connected or the flinging of some dirt and disagreeable hypotheses. But in the end, the result was always the same: there was an unappealing stench around the lot of them, and yes, they would have to do it again.

She often wished that just once in her short and single-mindedly academic life, her parents would just let a teacher _teach_ her, and stop making them all come round for dinner and debates. So the sight of this blatant snub at first introduction was… unheard of, entirely too curious, but also… almost a relief.

Professor Black seemed unperturbed by the chilly welcome and carried on with a brazen self-confidence that could only have sprouted, at one point or another, from time on a stage. She informed the Grangers that, for the last two years, she’d taught second-cycle English electives here at Whenchester. She also assured them, voice conspiratorially low and suddenly seeming very, very close to where Hermione sat, that Whenchester was a “most extraordinary place.”

“Well, we ought to be out,” Mr. Granger cut in as soon as a pause presented itself, bumping Hermione in his haste to get up on one knee. “Get this one back to the halls in time for some flute practice.”

(Hermione had not, nor would she ever, play the flute, and the very thought of being one of _those_ nightmarish students in a thin-walled dormitory gave her hives.)

But Bellatrix Black carried, quite shamelessly, on. It was becoming a bit alarming, a bit overbearing, when accompanied by the sheer presence of her, the knife’s edge of her smile. It seemed anyone in ear-shot was simply not allowed disinterest: she was the all-staff announcement on the intercom, the five o-clock commuter radio news, the AMBER alert going off on your cell. You’d listen. There was no _or_. She asked where they’d come from (“Oh, out East,” wavered Mum), what year she’d be (“Two” grunted Dad, squatting uncomfortably), how far they’d be from campus (a flicker of amusement in Professor Black’s dark eyes at Mum’s under-breath “Not far enough”), and explained she’d come here from so far north, she’d still never quite figured out summer (“Good thing its fall, then,” Mum managed with an awkward lack of commiseration). That was the last scrap she’d get.

“Suppose we’ll see you round,” Dad said with the barest nod of his head. It went up faster than it had gone down, and tipped a little sideways at the end, too, enough that it might have been a “We’re done here” as much as a civilized “So long.” He brushed invisible lint off the thighs of his slacks and extended a hand to his wife. 

And then they steered Hermione towards the door so intentionally they almost didn’t stop to pay.

“Nice…” Hermione attempted to toss back after her, but the door closed between them, shutting her “…to meet you” out in the non-weather of the late September night.

“By Jove, we barely made it out alive,” said Mrs. Granger, hurrying towards the car.

“Excuse me?” Hermione’s voice returned more shrilly than she’d hoped. “What was that about?”

“You tell me,” Mr. Granger said, opening her door for her and waving her inside with insistent haste. “Uncanny woman, that. As I’ve said, the sort of poorly-aged suffragettes who’ll accost any passable family with their tales of woe are not the beleaguered starlets they cast themselves to be. No, they are no more than an exhibitionist plague seeking their next unwilling host.”  

Ah, so only partially the unsolicited trivia, then. Mostly, it must’ve been the suit. Dad did so enjoy discouraging Hermione from developing any of the “unappealing modernisms of women at the turn of the millennia,” whatever that was supposed to mean when paired with a fondness for using such words as ‘suffragettes’ and ‘emancipationistas’ to describe them. Mr. Granger seemed to believe he was a staunch preservationist of the best times, all of them, which existed simultaneously in every country in every decade, and for no women whatsoever.

Mrs. Granger would gleefully debate him on the finer points, as would most of the woman-academics they pulled into their circle with any intent of sticking around for a while, but only when she disagreed. Tonight, it appeared, she did not. 

“I didn’t mean her,” said Hermione. “You were very rude.”

“Rude?” spluttered Mr. Granger.

“Very. She was…” Well, nice wasn’t right. Nor was _fascinating_. “…very sociable. I was interested in what she had to say.”

“There is nothing ‘sociable’ about accosting those clearly occupied with family matters.”

“What about Valerie Addlepick?”

“Who?”

Hermione sighed. “ _Professor_ Addlepick.”

“You remember, dear,” said Mrs. Granger. “From the Hempfords School?”

“She _accosted_ us in the middle of my—”

“Fourteenth birthday picnic,” he finished with some small bit of embarrassment. “Yes, yes, I know.”

“You invited her to sit down and made all the children—” All three of them. “—stop before we’d gotten any candy out of the piñata so we could listen to her ramble on and on about the future of standardized musical aptitude testing until _they all went home_.”

“Yes. I remember. I did apologize for that, Hermione. But she had become such a dear friend since we enrolled you. I take your point. But that was a very different situation. She had a rare mind, Valerie did. This… rude woman, on the other hand, why— I don’t even remember her name.”

“Bellatrix Black,” said Hermione, instead of reminding him he had failed to remember Valerie Addlepick just moments before.

“Well, alright. She was…”

“What?”

“Off-putting.”

Hermione frowned and slumped in her seat. “Off-putting?" He didn't reply. "You’re bonkers,” she muttered under her breath.

“Language,” said Mr. Granger, and Hermione knew it was not the implication that offended him, but the commonness of the word.

“You’re _dengue_ ,” she said more loudly, crossing her arms, watching the dull evening fog turning the streetlights outside an unappealing shade of underwater-sun yellow. “And Bellatrix Black was—” Well, now she had to think of words for her, and she’d flipped her obscure vocabulary switch into French already. “ _Engageant._ And… _recherché_.”

“Hmm?”

“We saw her twice today, dad.”

“Who?”

It was time to give up. _“Bellatrix._ ”

“Hadn’t you better start calling her Professor?” said Mrs. Granger even as Mr. Granger said, “Where?”

“Eccentricities.”

He said nothing for a moment, then nodded gravely. “Just the sort, I suppose. New age tomfoolery with a side of complete disrespect for those around her. Why, I suspect she’ll turn out just like Professor… oh, what was his name? The one from the states with that appalling accent.”

“Hector Mariutto,” provided Hermione, who had not called a professor ‘professor’ in a great many years, as they had such an unfortunate habit of sticking around in her and her parents lives with even greater frequency than Hermione saw them in school. 

“Hector! Hector and his absurd collection. Human technology found in geological folds with dinosaur fossils. Ha! The man truly had himself convinced alien interference was the more likely explanation than a careless archeologist.”

“That was Marcus McDougal, Dad. He lived right down the block in Ilvery. Hector was from Houston and kept ruining your trivia nights by getting smashed.”

“Yes! That’s right. Marcus. Of course. Marcus. Man did love his drink. Of course, I remember now.”


	3. Chapter 3

Mr. Granger had found Whenchester from the last buddy-prof he and Mrs. Granger had kept all but locked up in their no-smoking cigar lounge of a living room at the yellow house in Norwich. Hermione had spotted the brochure in the kitchen a day into her third week at her first second-year uni (after three transfers in year one) and had immediately stopped even the most half-hearted efforts to meet people.

Sure enough, it migrated from the kitchen to the passenger-side seat of their brown sedan, perfectly poised for her to pick it up and ask, “what’s this?” to prompt a well-rehearsed recitation of the merits of the latest in her string of obscure houses of learning. Hermione, however, did not oblige, and instead let it slip down the crack between the seat cushion and the console where its glossy pages filled with imperfectly-beaming faces beneath unreasonably pristine autumn foliage could go unseen until they really wanted to play their hand.

In the end, she didn’t fish it out till the drive up. Now, wandering campus, she compared its promises to reality and found predictable lack. Instead of the hopeful blue skies, the world was rather grudgingly gray; the sprawling athletic complex beside her hall more closely resembled a prison than the Olympic-training-esque spread it had been given on page 14, and the buildings all seemed rather closer together, names like Kennington Hall and Cheleste House and Sir Thomas Assumpta Library engraved over second-floor windows as though purely so the squat, Baroque-style buildings could introduce themselves to their neighbors, seeing as they were all but impossible to read while walking inside.

She wished, idly, she could summon a particular desire to be elsewhere, but it wasn’t as though this latest adventure was off to a markedly better or worse start than any of the rest. She did, however, wish she could skip the morning. Mum and Dad were waiting for her in the Cheleste Annex, host to the bronze-placard Admissions Office, for a meeting they hadn’t been able to have over the weekend, an embarrassing and oft-repeated attempt to ingratiate themselves with the staff member who controlled the transfer of credits from Hermione’s prior schools. Mr. Granger approached this task with the reserve and tenacity of Queen Mary determining the House of Windsor name would carry on whether Duke Mountbatten felt emasculated or not.

Of course, Dad would not have appreciated the characterization, which meant Hermione could take some small pleasure in her silent rebellion as he said, “I’ll take care of everything. You sit and look scholarly.”

That Mrs. Granger would sit and nod when conversation necessitated went unsaid.

Their target was on the other side of a white-slatted door. Ms. Gracine Satterly-Knox was as squat as the building which hosted her desk, sugar-voiced, but otherwise downright dowdy. Mr. Granger soon eked out sparse details of a personal history: thirty-two years as Chief Academic Advisory of Whenchester College, just under half of her lifetime. Hermione, scanning her surroundings, identified a fondness for ugly cats and gaudy flowers in several framed photographs. She also seemed to have a primary hobby of crochet. Hermione fingered the fringed edge of the handmade orange table runner, but the temptation to start picking it apart was too strong, so she tucked her hands back between her knees. 

“Well, as you can see, I’ve brought some papers,” Mr. Granger was saying, handing over a professionally clasp-tied blue folder. “Wasn’t really the space for a proper reckoning on your web portal, so I wanted to be sure Hermione could start off term with everything squared away.”

“Right,” said Ms. Satterly-Knox. The sugar in her voice already had a tinge of lemon about it; her eyes took in the folder with nothing but resigned dismay.

“Hermione’s last university— Well, it really is in a league of its own. One of the most forward-thinking spots in the country. Must be sure that translates, here. I’ve been assured you have some of the most preeminent educators in their fields, and would like some additional assurance Hermione will have access to them.”

“Of course you would,” said Satterly-Knox.

“Naturally,” Mr. Granger barreled on, “a new student with as esteemed an academic background as Hermione’s will be something of an intimidation, especially to anyone who expects their own merits to have them head of class. Now, I’d hate to cause any fuss; wouldn't want to upset anyone. Therefore, I think you and I can both agree: Hermione should start off in the standing she left. Why, she was _first_ in her cohort at—”

Gracine gave Mr. Granger a well-practiced look of Institutional Apology. It was a bit smug. “Not to discourage your daughter’s pursuits of... whatever rigor she wants to undertake here with us at Whenchester, Mr. Granger, but I must remind you that our policy on incoming students is very clear. No matter how outstanding her marks, she is starting well after the pre-enrollment period, so I’m afraid, among the more competitive courses, well. She cannot be granted—”

“Dear God!” Mr. Granger’s eyes were wide, smiling as though he’d suddenly been struck by an unexpectedly glorious sunbeam. Hermione recognized the look and wished, more than ever, to vanish. “Is that a diploma from _Mount McKinsey?”_

“I—Pardon?” Squeaky sugar, now; Gracine’s voice startled into caramel. She glanced over her shoulder as though taking in her own window-wall and the clutter of frames on it for the first time. “Oh. Well, yes. It was an honorary certificate for distinguished academic intermediation and arbitration.”

That was Mum’s cue. Mrs. Granger gasped and everyone suddenly remembered she was in the room. “Why, they could use you in HMDS.”

“Oh, _no,_ ” Ms. Satterly-Knox insisted, fighting an unfortunate smile that pinched up her cheeks into strange little piles in the corners of her eyes. “Not _hardly_.”

Twenty minutes later, the Granger family walked back through the white-wood door and into the Annex waiting room in varying degrees of triumph and resignation, Hermione holding her term schedule at the end of a tired wrist, several advanced seminars winkng up at her as her arm swung back and forth.

“No one will be ahead of you with _that_ transcript,” Mr. Granger said in an unsubtle aside, ruffling her hair in a way Hermione found completely unbearable. It turned an already untamable situation into a mess the texture of the fraying edge of a retro thick-plastic-rimmed frisbee, and would not be corrected until her next shower.

She would not have the time for that, as this was a Monday, the first of said Mondays for this late-starting but otherwise unremarkable term, and there was a pre-class assembly scheduled for 8:30 in the Goldenroche Auditorium. It was, after that penance of a meeting, now 8:27.


End file.
